Too Far Gone
by NMartin
Summary: Foxxay AU. When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declares that a deadly virus has escaped the walls of its investigation headquarters in Atlanta, Dr. Cordelia Foxx flees the city and seeks refuge in her country house in Louisiana. The week after her arrival, sheriff's deputy Misty Day shows up in her house, wounded and still wearing her uniform.
1. Prologue

**PROLOGUE**

**Atlanta, USA - 12:00**

That morning, Cordelia Foxx had woken up at 6am and drove through the cold streets of the city in direction to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters. Inside its walls, in the enormous underground labs that were strongly guarded and kept in secret to the public, there was a group of scientists developing the possible cure to cancer. She typed the security code of the laboratory and put on her white coat.

"Joanne, how is subject number sixteen doing?"

"His level of carcinogenic cells has decreased and the metastasis has stopped. With luck, the cancer will start eradicating in one week."

"Well." she wrote down the heart rate of the patient and walked to the next computer. "Daniel, what about yours?"

"No changes on patient number seventeen, at least not in the last twelve hours. Except for this." He handed her a file. "Read page three. There's something strange about the number of cancer cells. Its level has been increasing gradually and then dropped suddenly, as if it had disappeared."

"This is strange. Has he had vomits or fever?"

"No. Everything is normal, except for that."

"Oh, shit!" someone screamed. "Code Black!"

Cordelia approached the origin of the sound, running towards the glass that separated them and the patient number four. A thirty-year-old man that lied on a bed had started to have seizures, and the small wounds of his body had opened and were bleeding. A group of doctors, wearing positive pressure protective suits, entered and surrounded the man. The sound of the computers and of the sensors whistling in the room was deafening, but nonetheless they could listen to the shout of one of the doctors that fell onto the floor, one of the sleeves of his protective suit ripped. The others grabbed him and fled, leaving the patient alone in the small room. He was a strong man, a former wrestler with muscles and piercings all over his face that had just discovered that he had cancer. He stood up, approaching the glass and hitting it hard again and again. The glass trembled. He hit it again with his fists. Cordelia, ignoring her assistant's cries, approached the man, studying his face from behind the glass. He wasn't human, not anymore. His eyes were white, and the visible parts of his body had started to change to a paler color before acquiring a greenish tonality that surrounded all the bruises and wounds he had. Cracks started to appear in the glass. Cordelia walked backwards, approaching the exit as she felt the man's blind gaze finding her. She shivered. There was no man anymore, just something that hit the glass furiously and groaned, his mouth wide open. The glass broke and Cordelia screamed.

* * *

She didn't know how, but she had escaped the lab. When she got to the main hall, the front doors of the building were already sealed. People had started to panic, running in all directions and begging for the security guards to let them out. Whatever had happened just minutes before wasn't good and it had a high possibility of being extremely contagious. Her mind had raced, imagining all the possible consequences of the disaster as she tried to remember know if there was some kind of back door. Suddenly she had remembered the building's canteen, where she had had lunch for years, and ran in its direction.

* * *

_'I'm alive' _was the only thought that kept crossing her mind as she drove through the streets of the city, and the words she kept chanting as she walked into her apartment. The white walls of the luxurious place only reminded her the horror she had just lived. Everything was blurry, but at the same time she could remember some scenes perfectly. The man from the lab, a security guard trying to stop him. The man biting the guard's arm and ripping it off, digging its face into the flesh. She gasped, taking a sit on the couch and hiding her face between her hands.

_Biology student Cordelia Foxx finds uses simple technique as a cure to cancer, _the headlines had claimed years before. She had been the genius mind that had discovered that supposed cure; her face had been in science magazines and newspapers for weeks. Everyone in the medical community seemed to know who she was. What no one else except for her researching team knew is that the pathogens used for the cure transmitted through the air, and that the bacteria that had killed that man and turned into that kind of creature had a high possibility of leaking through the walls of the CDC. If it did, what would be the consequences? She finally arrived to a conclusion: she had to flee. _But, where can I go?_


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER 1**

After sleeping for ten hours Cordelia sat on the couch with a cup of coffee in her hands, waiting for the news to come on the TV. She had spent the first three days exhaustively cleaning up the two floors of the log house she owned in Lousiana, next to a beautiful lake. She hadn't been there for almost ten years, and though her mother still visited the place during summer, now it seemed to be filled with dust and useless college girl dresses. She had been so focused on her scientific research that had forgot about it, and now every single thing she found –the pair of glasses she broke while canoeing with her friends in the lake, the white lilies that her mother had placed around all the house during the last summer and now were dead, even the blue party dress she wore for her engagement party– reminded her of what was she about to lose if she had been right about what had happened in the lab. The blonde doctor had been having nightmares every night, all of them picturing worst case scenarios of pandemic illnesses that went from meaningless to deathly and catastrophic in a matter of weeks. In the four days she had spent in the house she had isolated herself from everyone and had tried not to turn any type of media where she could read or listen to the news. Anxious, she finally had given up, knowing that it was probably a matter of time when she had to face the consequences.

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have published today a press release communicating that the quarantine proclaimed in their Atlanta headquarters has finished. After four days of endless wait and toxicological tests, the workers of the building can finally go home. For what it seems, the alert code that was activated on Friday was just a false alarm. The authorities have proceeded now to investigate what happened in the laboratories last week, when an unknown man perpetrated a physical aggression against one of the scientists that researched into the now public laboratories of the building. The number of deaths produced during the CDC massacre has been set on two, including the aggressor, and there are six injured persons, most of them scientists. There are still three missing persons: Katharine Linde Gardinier, member of the federal advisory committee; Felix Jakeman, laboratory supervisor; and Cordelia Foxx, leader of the research and discoverer of the H+ bacteria. There hasn't been any news from them since the day of the massacre, but they figured in the list of workers who ch-" Cordelia turned off the television. She didn't want to hear anything else.

She thought about her mother, and how would she react to her disappearance. They had never been close –they hadn't even seen each other for years, since the old woman was now living in Paris with her new husband– but now the scientist couldn't do anything except thinking about how the woman would have already been informed about her being missing. Her thoughts now changed to her husband, who had just returned home from his 'business trip' just to find that his wife wasn't there waiting. Cordelia had been happy with him. They had met in college and had started a relationship that had lasted for more than fifteen years, until they had been told that Cordelia would never be able to carry his child. Cordelia shook her head, completely aware of the possibility of him seeing the divorce papers she had been hiding for weeks, hesitating to take a step forward and finally leaving him. It had been the night before the lab incident –when she had arrived home earlier than expected and had found him with a redheaded girl in their bed– when she had promised herself she would give the papers to him. _He doesn't deserve me,_ she mentally reassured herself. She stood up and walked to the kitchen, decided to eat something before going to take a swim on the pool.

* * *

In seven days there had been a massacre in a public organization, and a quarantine in that same building; but the thing that intrigued Misty the most was the fact that they were evacuating people. When the young Sheriff Misty Day was informed about the evacuation that was going to be done in Jean Lafitte, she couldn't believe that her family was going to have to move to New Orleans. She knew she was going to be able to see them when she got to the safe point they had started to organize in the city, but as the sheriff she would be one of the last persons to leave the town –she had to make sure that everyone had left their houses. A week after the massacre in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the small town remained silent, only disturbed by the sound of her car patrolling the place and the quiet walking of some soldiers that crossed it to get to New Orleans. Misty had never seen soldiers in the town, and she doubted she would see them again. Once another group of soldiers had turned around the corner and she had finished checking the western area of the town, the sheriff decided to visit the country houses that were placed next to the near lakes. That usually wasn't her job, but she couldn't bear to see the empty city once more. She drove through the dirty roads between the trees, checking every single one of the houses and crossing them out of the list. The Werner family, the Bacons, John Cogan and his girlfriend, the Lester sisters, everyone seemed to be gone.

It was when she was about to check the Rice's family house when she heard a gun been fired. Pain filled her body as she fell frontwards next to her car, blood staining the door as the bullet exited her shoulder. She panted against the floor, trying to get some kind of sound from her mouth, but she couldn't. She tried to creep under the automobile, but she found that she was paralyzed. The last thing she could remember before she closed her eyes was the sound of some steps next to her.

* * *

**To be continued! Reviews will be very appreciated**** :)**


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER 2**

When Cordelia heard what seemed to be gunshots she instantly got outside the pool, covering her naked body with a towel and running inside the house. For a moment she thought that it was only her imagination; that being alone for a whole week had made her go nuts. As she clumsily put her clothes on, fear rushing through her body while she tried to look for a reasonable explanation to the sound. Minutes later, she finally convinced herself that the gunshot had probably been caused by a group of hunters who had finally caught their prize. She went to the cellar to pick a bottle of wine and served herself a glass. She didn't use to drink that kind of wine -it was her father the one who had bought it, years before he died- but she still hadn't accustomed to the quietness of the place. She sat on the deck and opened her laptop, wanting to read the news. Her distraction was interrupted when she heard a loud bang on the door.

* * *

_I'm alive,_ Sheriff Day thought as she crawled to the log house. It was evening -she didn't know the exact time but she knew she probably would be having dinner at that hour- and she had driven half of the way back to the city under the rain when she saw the Goode's family house's lights on. She didn't expect it, they never visited the house unless it was summer, but she didn't care at the moment. The important thing was to get help, and with her car radio broken -whoever who had shot her had been truly careful to ensure her death- she had no more options than talking to the old woman. Fiona Goode was the cruelest, meanest, most conservative and untrustworthy person the sheriff had met in her whole life. With her right hand on her left shoulder and the other on the steering wheel, she turned right and parked her car as close as she could of the door. She then crawled outside of the car, and incapable of walking she left a trail of blood on the floor. She stood up again and tried to focus on the door as her vision started to blur and her breathing pace increased. _I'm gonna be okay, _she thought as she tried to remember everything she knew about blood loss and its effects. She was barely five meters away.

_My pulse is weak._

Four meters.

_My blood pressure has decreased._

Three meters.

_My respiratory rate is increasing._

Two meters.

_I've probably lost between one and two liters of blood._

One meter.

_I'm gonna be okay._

She lost consciousness before being able to knock on the door.

* * *

"Ugh…" Misty muttered, opening her eyes. She expected to be lying on the damp concrete or, worst-case scenario, dead. Instead, when she palpated at her sides, she found the soft cotton fabric of bed sheets. White bed sheets that felt heavenly to her, and the rays of light that entered from the window were like a river in the middle of a dessert. Unable to move, she stared at the ceiling and everywhere she could focus her gaze. Two or three wall decorations, a small chimney and an undetermined amount of pictures that she couldn't distinguish were just some of the things she was able to see. Once she finally gathered some courage, she turned her face to look at the wound of her shoulder. It wasn't bleeding. In fact, it was completely and perfectly covered with bandages. "Who…?" she started to question before finally noticing the woman who slept in an armchair next to her. Her blonde hair was covering half of her face, and she was wrapped in a blanket. She obviously wasn't Fiona Goode. Misty kept looking at her for some minutes, trying to know who she was, but before she could the need to go to the toilet won the battle and forced her to stand up. She was still weak, but now she could walk properly, so she wandered around the room until she found the bathroom. And she had to admit, it was the biggest bathroom she had ever seen. There was a bathtub next to a window that had views to the lake, and Misty just wished to get inside and get clean. _How much time I've been sleeping? _she wondered after she saw her reflection on the mirror. Her face was pale and she had bags under her eyes as a result of the blood loss. Not wanting to see herself a second more, she walked outside and crossed the bedroom.

"Three days." she heard someone say behind her. She spun, finding the woman looking at her from the chair. She had brown eyes and full lips, and her face was almost the same as the old woman's –with less wrinkles and vanity on it. She was obviously Fiona's daughter, Cordelia. Misty remembered having seen her many years before, in the same lake that she had seen from the bathroom.

* * *

**Summer of 1996**

That summer, sixteen-year-old Misty Day was attending a summer camp on the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, in the shores of Lake Salvador, next to the small town where she had grown up. She shared a cabin with four more girls, all of them the same age as her. Her parents had left her there a month before while they enjoyed a cruise in the Atlantic Ocean, thinking that she would have fun practicing archery and swimming on the lake. Instead, Misty had been hiding on a boat in the waters of the lake for an hour now, half asleep under the midday sun with a song stuck in her mind.

_It's like rain on your wedding day_

_It's a free ride when you've already paid_

_It's the good advice that you just didn't take_

_Who would've thought... it figures_

It was then when the boat hit something. She sat up, wanting to know what had disturbed her peace, and shocked she found out that it was, in fact, another boat. In it, a young couple laughed and drank beer. He was tall and had a fishing rod on his hands, while the girl had long blonde hair tied in a ponytail and was only wearing a stripped bikini.

"You should be more careful," the boy said with a fake smile. "Are you lost, kid?"

"Uh, no… I just…" she muttered, knowing that she couldn't admit that she was playing hooky from the camp activities. "I was just taking a nap."

"Okay, but beware of the monsters from under the sea."

"Why?"

"You could fall into the water."

"I am not gonna fall."

"I don't think so." he replied, and before Misty could react he kicked her boat and made it wobble, causing her to fall into the cold lake. The strong sunrays didn't warm the water enough, and less than a second later Misty felt her bones freezing. _Fucking douchebag, _was the first thought that crossed her mind after she resurfaced and started to get inside the boat again. The boy was now rowing away, while the girl that accompanied him looked at Misty with a worried face. She saw her mouthing something, but her ears were filled with water and she could not understand the words. _She is probably mocking me… Bitch, _was Misty's only thought.

* * *

"You've been sleeping for three days. You're the new Sheriff, right?" Cordelia asked, looking down to Misty's still blood-stained uniform.

"Yeah. Misty Day."

"Didn't know that the town had a new Sheriff."

"Sheriff Avery died in a shooting two years ago."

"Oh." Cordelia could remember him. When she had last seen him she was just a gifted biology student with the car full of luggage and ready to go to college. A man of fifty-five, maybe sixty, with beer belly and his shirt stained with donut cream. The only times they had talked were when she had to get her boyfriend out of jail -and they had been quite a few. "I haven't been here for-"

"Ten years. I know, my mother wouldn't stop talking about 'that wonderful science girl from the town's high school, Fiona's daughter' when you went to college, and she mentioned you the last time they met. She was your mother's friend."

"Martha Day?"

"Yeah."

"How is she?"

"She is in the safe point of New Orleans."

"Safe point?"

"Yeah, don't you know? They evacuated the town, that's why I was here. I was checking everyone had left."

"They evacuated the town? Why?"

"I don't know. The soldiers evacuated town after the massacre in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but they didn't tell us why. They just told people that it was for safety, but there have been soldiers on the town for a week…"

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…" Cordelia felt dizzy. She had seen the news; she knew that there were soldiers in some towns and cities, although everyone seemed to think that it was just a simulation of a terrorist attack. _This can't be possible. If they are gathering everyone in the cities… Oh God. Safe points are only used in three situations: Terrorist attacks, natural disasters or extremely contagious and deathly diseases, _she thought to herself. _There hasn't been a terrorist attack that affected this area for years, and it can't be something global, right? Natural _disasters… No, I can't remember anything during the last month. I should check that later. With two options discarded and with the Sheriff having mentioned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Cordelia was sure something had happened, and that it probably had something to do with the man of the laboratory.

"You look concerned. Do you know something about it?"

"No."

* * *

**To be continued! Reviews will be very appreciated**** :)**


End file.
